The Gate of Time
by Ignisami
Summary: In a war-torn future, one man is looking for a way to set back the clock. Doing so in a previously unexpected manner, is it any wonder that something goes wrong? It is now up to him to stop his new home from declining into what it became. Set in Naruto-verse, elements and characters from HP.
1. Ch1: Discovery in the Hills

**Hey all, and welcome to my first fanfic. I don't think this idea has been done before, but with so many fics out there I'm likely wrong. Do note that this chapter has not been beta-read.**

**Please, rate and review, would you kindly? **

**Disclaimer: I do not own either _Naruto_ or _Harry Potter_, these being creations of Masashi Kishimoto and J.K. Rowling.**

**Update: doc manager deleted some of the text formatting at the end. That has been fixed.  
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Meeting Helena

His eyes swept the valley nestled high in the mountainous regoins of the North, giving him a near-perfect view of the village that was once known as Kumogakure no Sato. The war had been kind to Kaminari no Kuni. Once Pain was done flattening the village, none really bothered with the rough landscape of Lightning Country. Too much pain, not enough profit.

He started a slow trot towards the few buildings that still stood. The gates of the village, while once large, were never all that opulent, Kumogakure ideology from the start leaning towards a more practical rather than aesthetic point of view. Even their function over form didn't hold up long against the might of metallic-grey eyes with concentric rings, though. Not even Kumogakure could stand against the Eyes of Samsara. Some like to claim that Kumogakure never fell, even in light of the Raikage and 98% of the village being killed by the Six Paths of God, for the Raikage Tower still stood. The man, middle-aged with long red hair and amethyst eyes turned to walk towards the Tower, for it was this structure that held the vast repository of knowledge that he was looking for.

The Raikage Library used to be a grand place, containing thousands of scrolls and books on hundreds of shelves. Today, only three out of eighteen sections haven't been plundered for knowledge to aid them in stopping the war. "Okay... let's get to work."

Three hours and a hundred scrolls later, he pulled a random scroll, worn with age, from shelf E-23. Yotsuki Kenta, nephew to the Shodai Raikage Yotsuki Kenjiro. Turning to science over combat at a young age, the only recorded Yotsuki to do so since recording began, Kenta was often considered the black sheep of the family.

Until he invented the **Raiton no Yoroi **during the fifth year of Kumogakure's existence. Immediately, he was placed on a pedestal on par with Kenjiro was for coming up with a technique that remains a Yotsuki clan secret to this day. This particular scroll grabbed his attention not only because of the author, but because a Yotsuki-written scroll was in section E, which required Academy Student level of clearance. Even civilians had that in Kumo. "Perhaps it was written before Kenta invented the armour?" he mused. He opened the scroll, allowing his eyes to roam its contents. It was what you'd expect from a E-level scroll, with the curious exception of a single paragraph in the sidelines.

_'Discovery of undocumented cave at the base of the third mountain to the north-north-west of unraikyō, cobwebs indicate decades since last entry. Danger level estimated class 5, entry below S-rank extremely dangerous. My team did not enter far, lacking an S-rank.' _

"This looks... promising. I wonder if they ever went back to the cave to explore? If this still rests here I doubt it. Yotsuki pride at its best, truly." He scratched his chin. This _could_ provide the break that he'd been looking for, ever since the war's end nearly ten years ago.

"Kami-sama, I wish I had a summon to bounce ideas off at times like these."

Talking to himself was an art he'd had to perfect out of necessity these past few years. The few humans that survived the Fourth War weren't going to be talking any time soon, if they still lived at all.

Gathering his supplies with a sigh, he stood up to trek towards the Gorge of Clouds and Lightning.

o=o=o=o=o=o=o=o

Unraikyō is not a hospitable place. It was therefore the perfect location for the Yotsuki clan compound, and later the perfect environment for the Hachibi containers after the main compound was relocated to Kumogakure fifteen kilometres away. Fortunately, he didn't have to enter the gorge itself, just skip around it until he found the cave Kenta mentioned.

"Well, here we are. The base of the third mountain north-north-west of the Gorge."

The cobwebs were heavily present, indicating that Kenjiro's comment hadn't evoked the response of sending an S-rank ninja as he'd thought. Truly, the response mattered little. Either the cave contained what he sought, or it didn't and he would move on to the next promising lead.

One problem remained, though: which technique would he use to clear out the spiderwebs, as well as any actual spiders within? He only had two choices here. Overkill or Overkill.

"**Shakuton: Kajōsatsu"**

Sometimes, being the remnant of an Orochimaru sub-element experiment has its upsides. Scorch element ninjutsu, essentially the bane of all the eight-legged _freaks_ was one of those. He'd often wished for more elements, but it was probably for the best that he was limited to just three natures and non-elemental chakra.

The cave itself was fairly unremarkable. The standard granite rock that is common to Kaminari no Kuni, the uneven surfaces common to all caves... and, of course, the spiders and all other sorts of creepy crawlies. The answer to all of the problems is simple, though.

"**Shakuton: Taiyōfurea."  
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Sustainable, self-centered full-circle area of effect attacks. Scorch Release: Solar Flare was at the top of that list. Essentially a scaled-down Incinerating Flare, it differed from the latter in that it could be channelled, though it sacrificed the Flare's fifty-metre radius for a narrow five, ten if he really poured chakra into it. Bonus point: it provided light that didn't obscure vision, like a similar fire technique would have done. Soon enough, he came upon a fork in the cave. One path was blocked with rocks while the other was left free. He got an odd feeling from the rocks, but a quick standard genjutsu release technique did nothing.

"Huh, so no illusion. Which leaves a side path that's been conveniently blocked by boulders that have _totally_ naturally fallen in a perfect hexagonal pattern, thick enough that nothing short of suicidal explosion jutsu or Earth jutsu from, say, Kurotsuchi, could break through, though then you'd have to worry about such minor things like _cave-ins, _and, I dunno, _dying? _It's like they put up an arrow 'go this way please'."

Walking down the free right-hand path, he eventually came upon four more of these half-blocked forks. "If the patterns holds," he mused, "the sixth forks should be right about the cor... The bloody hell?!" Instead of a fork, the cavernous path expanded into a grotto kilometres wide and high. Contrary to the path towards it, a soft light illuminated all, though he couldn't find any actual source of the light. Pivoting his eyes away from the ceiling, he looked upon the strange contents of the massive grotto.

To the left, a lake that stretches for kilometres. To the right, a _forest inside a cave _that looks like it never heard of the word 'friendly'. It is, however, what awaits the eyes looking straight ahead that truly boggles his mind.

A castle. An honest-to-Kami _castle_ with a bridge crossing the lake so that one can reach the gates. Upon closer inspection, it seems that the massive lake forms a sort of moat, although the lack of a drawbridge, and the presence of an extremely wide bridge of mortar and stone, seems to suggest that the lake isn't meant to function as such.

Walking across the bridge to the castle's gates, the increasing illumination from that weird source-less light reveals that the castle isn't what one would call intact. The three visible towers have suffered varying degrees of damage, suggesting a siege or a straight-out assault. Given the battered, but mostly intact, nature of the walls, the assault is the most likely option. Jagged peaks on top suggest that the castle once held _five_ towers, further suggesting a siege had taken place. As he neared the doors, he froze. _I know I felt _something. _There's someone still alive here?_

"_Welcome, young traveller. It has been a long time since anyone came here."_ A pearly, translucent figure of a rather attractive woman in her late twenties, if he'd had to guess, wearing robes that wouldn't look out of place in a Daimyou's court, comes _out of the fucking wall._

"An actual ghost?" He asked, his head tilted with a single eyebrow raised, giving the young translucent woman a good view of his sharp, angular face with amethyst eyes, crowned by straight blood-red hair to his shoulder blades. She'd already noticed his athletic figure, he was sure. Not that it mattered, if she actually _was_ a ghost. It was curious that he could understand her, though.

"_Yes. You don't seem all that surprised."_

He snorted. "Lady, over the course of my life I've seen dead people brought back to life, souls being extracted from living bodies, a single man calling down _meteors_ because he had special eyes, another literally creating a _second moon _because he had a different set of special eyes. Meeting a ghost, while unusual, does not even rate tenth place on my list of weird things."

She giggled. _"__I can imagine.__ What are you doing here, traveller?"_

"Looking for a boat to traverse the River of Time upstream." As expected, her eyes grow to the size of saucers. "You don't happen to know how, would you?"

This time, she laughed. It was a hearty sound that one wouldn't immediately associate with a specimen of the female gender. _"Certainly I do."_ It was his turn to splutter now. _"The power requirements are fairly __gigantic__ though, __especially if you desire __is__ to go back more than a few days,__ and we'll have to see if part of what powers it is even responsive to your energy."_

"Oh? My energy? What do you mean with that, my lady?" He sighed. _Figures that there'd be a catch._

"_In times past, before the onset of ninja, we used a different energy. We called it magic, and I'm certain you'll agree with that term when you see what it can do."_

"Magic?" he asked, incredulous. "Surely you jest, my lady?"

"_I do not, traveller,_" she replied in a serious voice. _"We used ambient energy, focused through wands, to varying effects like levitation or creation of inanimate items. When the demons came, they tainted the ambient energy to what it is now. In the early days after the war, when this castle still saw the open sky, we called it chakra. Do they still do so now?" _

He nodded. "We do. One question, if you don't mind. Well, two actually."

"_Proceed."_

"First, how exacltly can we understand each other? Second, it appears I have been remiss in my manners. My name is Gogyōko Hiei, my lady, may I ask for yours?"

"_Both are valid questions,"_ she agreed. _"To answer in order, we are able to understand each other because of a modified translation charm that taught me all the vocalized languages you knew, though I do not know their script."_

"Nifty," he interjected.

"_Quite,_" she agreed. _"Unfortunately, you will have to learn our words the hard way. Now, allow me to correct my faulty manners by introducing myself. I am Helena Ravenclaw, daughter to Rowena Ravenclaw, last existence that remembers the Demon War. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance."_

– – – – –

Glossary, all translations either from or from :

**Shakuton: **Scorch Release

** Kajōsatsu:** Extremely Steaming Murder. Canon ability.

**Taiyōfurea: **Solar Flare. The user expels Scorch chakra from his or her body continuously. For short-range applications, expelling chakra from all 361 tenketsu and a few areas without tenketsu is perfectly fine, if draining. All applications beyond a 10 metre radius require chakra amounts comparable to the Nanabi Jinchūriki or up to use for meaningful amounts of time.

**Unraikyō**: Gorge/Valley of Clouds and Lightning.


	2. Ch2: Magical Learning

**Welcome to the second chapter of The Gate of Time, coming in at 5111 words before Author's notes. I will try to make 4-5k word chapters every fortnight, assuming that uni doesn't completely swamp me with work. **

**Note: still no beta. Also still do not own either Naruto or Harry Potter. **

**Please take a moment to review and share your thoughts, would you kindly? **

_Date: 2167 PRS, 3rd day of the Month of the Gods_

_Two years have passed since my last entry, and I thought I would never write another. The events of yesterday highlighted the recording of events to come so as to not lose complete track of them. Before I retell what happened yesterday, I should highlight the past two years._

_Following the utter failure to find any useful material in the archives of Kirigakure no Sato in Mizu no Kuni, at least useful regarding the chosen objective of temporal translation, I trekked towards the islands of Uzu no Kuni, home to the former Uzushio no Sato, the Village of the Whirling Tides and home to the Uzumaki Clan, where Orochimaru got the genetic material from which he created me. _

_The remnants of Uzushio were a depressing sight. Despite the unnatural circumstances of my 'birth', for want of a better word, when my gaze fell upon Uzushio I felt an incomparable sadness, the source of which utterly eluded me. At the time, rumours of Uzumaki genetic memory were just that, rumours. Regardless, I travelled into the village, hoping to stumble upon the archives._

_It took me three months of diligent searching to find anything at all, and what I found was that the famed Uzumaki Archives, the ones which served as one of the major reasons for its destruction... didn't exist. There were some scrolls on how to generate seals the Uzumaki way, but actual sealing theory was sparse. _

_I only learned a year later, through a discarded record of an interrogated Uzumaki that there _used to be_ an Archive, but it was sealed up so tight that only the bearer of the Uzumaki Releasing Seal, sometimes called the Opening Seal, could open it. Naturally, it was in the possession of the clan head and the first thing that was destroyed upon discovering that the island was under imminent siege by a force that could, and eventually would, wipe them out. Hints were that a copy of it was in the genetic memory of the clan head's line... which died out when Naruto did. Joy. Technically, that line includes me, since my genetic source was the daughter of Naruto's grandfather who was the clan head that destroyed the seal, but Orochimaru somehow managed to destroy all hopes of consciously accessing it on my own. I don't know how, I didn't delve all that much into Orochi's work on me before I fled his lab._

_Following the failure at Uzushio, though I did learn a handy new way of crafting seals, I set out to travel to the last major Hidden Village, despite low hopes of learning anything useful. _

_I stopped a few times on the way to Kumo in a few of the minor villages on the way, several of which were civilian-only but still held Fūinjustu Archives, the profession being one of the few that required zero chakra to do, as long as you stuck to drawing the seals. Everything else requires the capability to actively mould chakra, though most seals are capable of working with the levels of chakra generated by civilian-heritage Academy students that have, quite literally, just unlocked their chakra. _

_All told, the journey from Uzushio to Kumogakure took a year and a half. Kumogakure itself was a sorry sight, with the only building left standing being the Raikage Tower with attached library. In this library, I found a scroll of Yotsuki Kenta, brother to the Shodai Raikage Yotsuki Kenjiro, detailing the presence of a cave near Unraikyō. I do not know why I dropped everything else and left for the cave, perhaps an unrecognised gut feeling? Regardless of the reason, I made my way to the cave. _

_In which I eventually found the castle that I have been told was once called Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry. A three-thousand year old castle inside an enormous cave, complete with gigantic foreboding forest and a lake, complementary ghost included. _

_Yes, _ghost_. Her name is Ravenclaw Helena (though in those days they apparently introduced themselves with given name first, rather than clan name as I record it), and she mentioned something of a Demon War, the few mentions of which concur with the timeline of the ancient past as given by the Kyūbi with Naruto as intermediary. From what I've been able to glean, Kaminari no Kuni used to be a place called Scotland and the site of the last stand against invading demonic hordes led by the Jūbi no Ōkami, the Ten-Tailed Wolf. _

_She also revealed that she has the key to the completion of my quest's first objective; to go back in time. The answer is the progenitor of sealing, an art she called Ancient Runes which appears to essentially be sealing with different symbols. The big thing setting runes apart from sealing is both the inflexibility and flexibility of runes. Each symbol or series of symbols means exactly one thing, though different alphabets, of which Lady Helena says there are nine, can be connected and replaced with impunity. She wants to teach me another set of two alphabets that are much closer to syllabaries like kanji or both the 'kana. Each symbol represents a general concept, and only by understanding, truly understanding, the concept can the rune be applied and made to work like intended. Of course, this is with _magic_, not chakra, though apparently the runic enchantments in place that keep the castle as fresh as it was three thousand years ago work fine with the natural, ambient chakra, so I am hopeful that freshly-drawn runic arrays can be powered with human chakra._

_She mentioned a massive power requirement, though. I will need to investigate. _

_End of Entry._

– – – – – – – – –

_Date: 2167 PRS, 10th day of the Month of Frost_

_It's been slightly more than a month since my last entry, owing to the harsh study schedule of Lady Helena plus my own morning and evening workouts to keep in shape leaving me little time to write. If only I could perform the Kage Bunshin... _

_Regardless, it's been a month of heavy progress. Lady Helena and myself have confirmed that freshly-drawn runes _do_ activate when fed human chakra, allowing for the potential of runic arrays to be charged, not just maintained, with ambient chakra. Apparently, there's a difference. Lady Helena agrees that the runes should be capable of interacting with seals, but the exact method still escapes us for the moment. Perhaps Kyōtyō (cooperation, harmony) with Ehwaz (partnership)? _

_My studies have focused so far on the first of nine alphabets, Elder Futhark. Each character, some far more intricate than others, represents a single letter, but also has a word attached to it. For example, the rune Ehwaz is both the letter 'e' and 'Partnership'. The rune can either appear in a compound in which case it is interpreted as a letter, alone in which case it is the word, or 'encapsulated' which means it is both in a compound _and_ read as its word rather than letter. Encapsulation is made clear by a perfect square enclosing the rune. I am, as of yet, unclear what encapsulation is useful for, but I assume it will be explained in time._

_There appear to be more differences than just form, however. When I sealed my training weights back into my scroll, Lady Helena had mentioned that she had, in all her thousands of years, never seen such a feat performed with runes. In contrast, multi-compartment trunks were completely unheard of when it came to sealing though runes made it easy, which are essentially overlapping pocket dimensions. There is a sealing array that can do that, but it requires an area equivalent to half of Hi no Kuni._

_I suspect that the difference is, as usual, one of power versus control. Preliminary hypotheses state that runes can handle far more power than seals can, while seals are much better at fine control though overload much faster than any runic array. This hypothesis is supported, at least initially, by commentary from Lady Helena that she had never heard of an overpowered runic array. Should we work out a way for seals to interact with runes, we can set up collection seals that funnel ambient chakra to the runic array, thus allowing the collector array to suck in far more chakra than it otherwise would before it explodes, which _should_ in turn make the power requirements manageable. Assuming the hypothesis holds, of course._

_A word about the power requirements, as I find I have completely disregarded mentioning them. To clarify the unit used, one Hir is the amount of raw chakra it takes to vertically lift one kilogram of water by exactly one metre._

_Each gate allows for entry further and further into the past, increasing the allowed temporal translation by an order of magnitude, with the exception of the first gate. I will not record the formulae here, for I do not intend to replicate the method from my own notes or memory or allow any of my descendants, should I be successful, to do so._

_In total, eight gates need to be opened. There is an interesting link to the Eight Celestial Gates, both in number and terminology that bears investigating later. The first gate requires a mere 500 Hir of energy, which is essentially a low-cost offensive C-rank jutsu. The second requires 4000 Hir, or a low-cost S-rank jutsu (things like **Hiraishin**, that cost even less chakra than a **Katon: Gō****kakyū**, __not included). The third requires a staggering 400000 (four hundred thousand) Hir, on par with a full-power Ichibi Bijūdama. The eight and final gate necessitates the expense of nine hundred _million_ Hir... the total amount of energy in the ambient chakra of the entirety of Hi no Kuni for a full year. This is, it should be noted, just the cost of opening that one gate. _

_A further fourteen million Hir is required to bridge the last gap from the eighth gate to the exact point where I desire to start... a year before Naruto's graduation, so that I can become a Jōnin and hopefully become Naruto's sensei over Kakashi. No offense to Kakashi's shinobi skills, which were substantial, but the man made for an absolutely horrid teacher if the stories from Naruto hold any truth at all. I don't think it's possible to do worse, based on the same stories, though he did actually start teaching them when Naruto returned with Jiraiya. Typical genius fallacy, really. So advanced that he can't comprehend that others don't know how to tree-walk, or recite the shinobi code front to back, or do any number of things he takes for granted, making him far more effective as a teacher when he has students that _aren't _complete novices._

_I'm getting off-track. Lady Helena has deemed my progress with Elder Futhark such that she is adding a second alphabet to the mix... Late Phoenician. If things go well, I should progress to Late Grecian sometime during the second week of the Month of Affection, which is also the month that marks the eleven-year anniversary to the end of the Fourth War. By the end of next year (thirteen months from now) I should have proficiency in all nine alphabets and at least one or two characters from the conceptual languages. I don't think I'm going to like learning Early Phoenician and Early Grecian runes, though. The understanding required to be able to use even a single rune of those two languages is... mind-boggling. _

_Fortunately, the runic array that allows for the time-travel does not use either of the Early languages. _

_End of Entry _

– – – – – – – – –

_Date: 2168 PRS, 3rd day of the Month of New Life_

_In my entry on the 10th day of the Month of Frost I thought I was rather proficient in the use of runes... I was wrong. I had completely overlooked what is involved in the creation of runic arrays, especially on the mathematical side of things.  
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_Sweet Kami-sama I feel like back in Calc 3 in the University of Hi no Kuni during the quieter years of the past few decades. A simple runic tetragon, a runic array in any shape that consists of four symbols linked by lines, though it mostly takes on the shape of a square, rarely a rectangle, requires approximately half a metre of parchment with some seriously complex mathematiccs. I get the feeling that this wasn't a course often offered at Hogwarts when it was still a school. I will have to remember to ask. _

_The runic array that I'm supposed to craft for the time travel is, at minimum, a twenty-eight symbol array from multiple languages _plus_ sealing! On that note, I have finally found, yesterday, that Kyōtyō, meaning harmony or conciliation and mostly used in music, is the key to linking runes to seals... when each character was written in the original Hanzi script rather than the Kanji I use today. If my children are reading this while I still live... do not ask me how I discovered this. Please, for _both_ our dignities. _

_Lady Helena calls, I have to go._

_End of Entry _

– – – – – – – – – –

_Date: 2170 PRS, 5th day of the Month of Water._

_I finally wheedled the story of the Demon War from Helena, and gruesome does not even begin to describe it accurately. I thought the Fourth War was bad with its total death toll of 100 million, but the Demon War had battles where a hundred million died in a _single day_. To save the minds of the reader(s) in times when I no longer live and the world may not be as brutal, I will omit most of the gory details. Just know that during the conflicts described next there is an undercurrent of death, rape, torture, betrayal, greed, lust for power, and all the nasty stuff that lies at the base of human nature when morals and ethics no longer matter. _

_Back in ages past, before the magic was corrupted by demons to become chakra, there was a group of people that was born with the ability to manipulate the ambient energy that called themselves 'Witches' and 'Wizards', or more generally, 'Mages'. The Mages kept to themselves for the most part, because the non-magicals, 'Muggles' or 'Mundanes', grew jealous of the Mages' ability to change reality of they saw fit. _

_They were still human, though, and some leaned more towards the Dark, others the Light, and yet others the Gray. Each developed their own techniques to suit their needs, from healing to torture to pleasure to enslavement. One day one of these Dark Wizards was charismatic enough to gather himself some followers to subjugate everyone that wasn't a Dark-aligned human. Naturally, the Light and Gray, as well as all non-human sentients fought back. Somehow this conflict, referred to by Lady Helena as the 'Blood War' with both First and Second prefixes, remained an internal magical affair, right up to the very end. _

_As the Second Blood War drew to a close and the Dark Wizard in charge of the faction, someone by name of 'Voldemort', was increasingly cornered and cut off from financial, political, and militaristic backers, decided it'd be fun if he were to summon demons and subjugate them as a sort of free mercenaries to slaughter his opponenets. Voldemort forgot the first and single-most important rule of summoning and creation, however; 'thy shalt not bring into this world that which thy lacketh sufficient mental, magical, or physical prowess to control'. _

_He summoned a Lieutenant, a being that sounds like it's on par with the Sanbi at half-power, and got absolutely obliterated. _

_The next fourteen years saw a genocide of massive proportions; the human race dwindled from more than seven billion to under thirty million. The continents of the Earth were re-arranged by the demonic host resulting in the Elemental Nations as they exist today. _

_Only four groups had any success at all fighting against the demons; armies, paramilitary groups, Mages, and Monk-Mages. The latter was a group of monks that could also use magic, differing primarily in _how_ they applied their magic. The Mages focused on using their magic for external effects, with the exception of potions, while the Monk-Mages preferred sharpening their bodies and honing their minds in an attempt to become one with the world around them. _

_For fourteen years they struggled until the general of the demonic army decided to show himself, prompting the Monk-Mages and the Mages to form a small group of twenty to kill it. Fifteen Mages and five Monk-Mages went into battle. Ten came out, irrevocably changed. One of these ten, the only surviving Monk-Mage of the group, was a man named Ōtsutsuki Hagoromo, the man we now revere as the Rikudo Sennin._

_The demonic general, the Jūbi no Ōkami, was sealed inside Hagoromo-sama, giving rise to the very first sealing array. It was in essence the Rikudo Sennin his desire to lock away the demon made manifest. But the Sage only thirteen years old at this time, and lacked the physical fortitude to contain the Jūbi's full power for long. It was eventually decided that Hagoromo-sama would keep the mind of the beast as well as its body locked within his own, distributing the power of the beast to nine individuals._

_The nine Mages that survived the fight against the Jūbi volunteered. Each shifted into their Animagus forms, the result of a difficult branch of magic allowing the transformation from human into animal and back, and was given a part of the Jūbi's power, giving rise to the Bijū as we know them. Fox, Ox, Beetle, Horse, Monkey, Turtle, Cat, and Raccoon, in order of descending number of tails. _

_Lady Helena shared the names of the nine Mages with me, though I will out of respect for the sacrifice of their humanity not record them here. For beings like them, names have power in and of themselves, which is partly why I suspect that Madara could control the Kyūbi as he did._

_This was the situation at the time that the shinobi era, counted in years Post Rikudo Sennin, started. The survivors were mostly former military and paramilitary individuals, and even the ones that weren't had just lived through a horrendous war. As befits human nature, only a single choice of outlet for this tension was chosen: more fighting. The rest, as they say, is history._

_On another, less depressing, note I have finished my studies of the nine runic alphabets. Runic array construction is proceeding at a slower pace, but steady progress is being made. Current prognosis is four years until I am good enough to actually craft and perform the ritual. _

_With all that is left being improving proficiency in runic array construction, I think it is time to find out if the other branches of magic open to the Mages after the Demon War will work for me. Specifically, I wish to find out if I can become an Animagus and if I have the capability to cast magics based on blood. _

_Will write more as I discover it. _

_End of Entry._

– – – – – –

_Date: 2170 PRS, 7th day of the Month of Water_

_Almost blew myself up attempting a bloodwolf, a wolf made of blood that absorbs the beneficial parts of its kills into itself. Since it is made of _my_ blood, that means that I get the benefits when it dissipates in a manner similar to the Kage Bunshin memory transfer. If successful, I _have_ to find myself a Hōzuki and have my wolf kill him or her. _

_End of Entry _

– – – – – –

_Date: 2170 PRS, 13th day of the Month of Water_

_Did some testing with the blood over the past week, supervised by Lady Helena. The chakra content of the blood makes it far too unstable without still the chakra at the time of release... which requires absurd amounts of control. Since chakra control of that level is exclusive to women, I will discard this line of enquiry. This is, incidentally, why blood sealing is extremely dangerous.  
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_Next up: Animagus. First step: find some books in the library that deal with the transformation without the use of potion, since the ingredients that once grew in the forest outside the castle have died out with the advent of chakra._

_End of Entry_

– – – – – – –

_Date: 2171 PRS, 11th day of the Month of the Gods_

_Been here for four years and eight days now. Progress on Animagus transformation is slow, currently at a single paw. _

_Looking back through the entries of the past months, I can't believe I've not yet recorded what animal I am. I'm a mongoose. Symbolic meanings of cleverness, agility, and strength of word aside... immunity to snake venom? _

_To put it with the eloquence of a child: take THAT, Orochi-teme! _

_End of Entry _

– – – – – – –

_Date 2180 PRS, 1st day of the Month of Falling Leaves. _

_It is time. Every branch of magic in Hogwarts has been tested for compatibility with a chakra network. Depressingly little can, only runes and self-transfigurations are allowed. Everything else tends to explode in more or less spectacular ways. _

_All that remains is the construction of the runic array, the mathematics behind it having been completed long ago. Links to the power wells, the arrays that store the chakra from the aggregation seals, need to be created. _

_These are the final words I will write in this journal. If the temporal translation is successful and the journal survives the trip, I will put it in a vault for any descendants I may have._

_End of Entry_

– – – – – –

With a snap, he closed the journal. A quick application of chakra sealed the journal back into the seal on his wrist.

His eyes swept around as he took in his home of the past thirteen years for what would likely be the last time, unless he ended up in Kumogakure following the completion of the ritual, which was a distinct possibility. With a heavy heart he stood up from his chair in the Room of Requirement, the only place in the castle that still was capable of creating food following the demise of the House-elves in the wake of the Demon War.

Closing the door of the Room behind him, he turned left and made his way to the Headmaster's Staircase, the once-secret entrance to the Heart of Hogwarts. He would need its power for this. Not in the last place because that was where his four power wells were.

His hands rose to cup the cheeks of the gargoyle. "Hogwarts, sweetheart, the stairs please."

The gargoyle sunk and revealed a set of descending stairs going down far enough that the other end was not visible through the darkness. Putting foot in front of foot, he descended into the depths. He felt something stir behind him and a smile appeared on his face.

"_This is it, then?_" she asked in her usual voice, slightly echoing from a dimension neither of them could ever quite reach, though Helena certainly was closer than he was. Perhaps she would find her own solace now?

"It is. It is time for me to go back now, Lady Helena."

"_I will keep an eye on the runes, then. You know what happens when even a _millimetre_ too much or too little is carved._"

He winced, reflexively raising a hand to his non-existent left eyebrow. He certainly did know what would happen. His left eyebrow _still _hadn't grown back after twelve years. "I know, and I thank you."

The pair, one living one not-quite-dead, reached the bottom of the staircase. A large circular chamber opened before them, a single altar in the middle disturbing the otherwise near-perfect emptiness. Four circular arrays were carved in the floor near the wall, each having four ink-drawn square arrays drawn on the wall supporting it, the centres of the carvings forming a perfect square. Without a word he grabbed a chisel and started carving what would be his masterpiece into the floor, occasionally retracing his steps because of a line that was too long or too short.

His stomach ached for food, but he dismissed its cries. His brain demanded sleep, yet he pushed on. As ironic as it was, he was on a schedule. The power well and chakra aggregation arrays would have the needed power exactly seven years, three days, twenty hours and fifteen minutes after initiation. It was now seven years, one day, seven hours and eighteen minutes since he set the power wells into motion. This array required nine perfect concentric circles, one for each gate plus an activation command. In a manner similar to sealing, each part of a runic array was a message, the entire array coalescing into a request to a higher power.

_Oh, Mistress of Time, allow me the chance to turn back the clock. _

_Impart upon me permission to rectify the mistakes made in times gone by._

_I beseech thee, grant me the strength I require for the future of the past to change._

_So that Life can thrive and survive in the new world that will be made by my guiding hand._

_From the ashes of the world I leave behind, a new one will be created. _

_I ask of thee, confer upon me the wisdom to ensure that the past world will not repeat the mistakes of the past._

_I beseech thee to open the initial eight Temporal Gates so that my desire can be fulfilled._

_Search my soul, my mind, and my body for any impurities and cleanse them from me so that my goal remains pure._

_I beseech thee, send me through the Gates to my requested destination: exactly thirty full orbits of this planet around the sun into the past into the village known to the humans as Konohagakure no Sato._

Finishing the last ring, he half-turned towards his spectral companion of the past thirteen years.

"Only the links left. Three minutes after that the array will activate. It has been a pleasure to know you, Lady Helena."

She nodded. She allowed herself a moment to reflect on the past thirteen years, ever since the red-haired, purple-eyed stranger she now knew as Gogyōko Hiei stumbled upon the castle. Shaking herself out of her reverie, she replied, "_Likewise, Hiei. If you can, visit me on the other side of the Temporal Gates? It does get lonely here, with no one around to speak to for nearly three thousand years._"

He sat up, properly this time, and laid the chisel in his lap. _"_I will try, Lady Helena. If I land where I want to land it may not be possible for a few years, depending on diplomatic relations."

"_That is all I ask. A few years more or less will not matter in the face of three thousand._"

He put the chisel back into contact with the ground. The links were not all that hard to carve, or all that long since the main temporal array was massive requiring the links to be no more than thirty centimetres, so completing the links was a matter of a mere forty-five minutes, once again aided by Helena. Unlike normal runic arrays, the links were simply sufficient repetitions of the word 'Partnership' in Late Grecian to physically bridge the gap between two arrays. In this case, the structure of the power wells would direct the stored energy to flood the temporal array with power upon completion of the link.

Upon completion of the last link, he threw the chisel out of the room to ensure that it would not damage the arrays. Helena followed suit so that her spectral presence would not interfere with the energy flows of the array. Technically he would have needed to strip completely naked, but these clothes were so soaked in the ambient energy that it didn't matter all that much. He sat down in the exact centre of the array.

One by one, the eight rings of the array lit up, starting with the innermost ring. The first three took very little time, since the power requirements for the first three gates were minuscule compared to what was needed for the sixth, never mind the seventh or eighth.

"This is goodbye, Lady Helena. May we meet again in the next life." The fourth ring lit up.

She nodded. "_Until we meet again, Hiei. Take care,_" she said with a downcast note to her voice.

"I will," he assured her as the fifth ring started to glow faintly. "I will take as much care as the situation allows me to take."

She nodded again, and they fell silent. Half a minute later the brightness of the fifth ring matched that of the first four. _I wonder what it'll be like, hurtling across the void of time and space. Will it be painful, will it be comfortable, will it be an emptiness of sensation until re-entry into normal temporal flow? __Will I land in my adult body, will I be de-aged or will I fuse with my existing sel__f? _

The ninth ring activated, flooding the room with an unbearably bright white light, causing the spectral spectator to close her eyes, for what little good it did her. When she re-opened her eyes, the room beyond was empty of life. With a last glance at the Heart, she turned around and floated off.

– – – – – – –

When Hiei opened his eyes and cleared away the deep, seemingly all-consuming black of time travel, his amethyst eyes rested upon the inside of a pipe. Looking around him he noticed that an ankle-high layer of water stretched through the pipe as far as his eyes could see.

"A sewer. I landed in a sewer, of all places." He sniffed the air. "Cleanest sewer ever, though. No stench at all."

An oppressive weight bore down upon him after a few moments. "Woah," he exclaimed. "Massive chakra source. Better check it out."

He cautiously proceeded deeper into the sewer, the powerful source of chakra feeling closer with every step he took. "Is it just me, or is it getting darker in here?" he mused quietly.

As he continued to walk through the sewer, getting ever closer to his target, his eyes roamed upward, focusing on two pipes that ran across the ceiling of the sewer system. One was much thicker than the others, he'd estimate them to be a metre and a decimetre across, and pulsed with an angry red, contrasting the serene blue of the thinner pipe.

"I... have a bad feeling about this."

He turned the corner and found himself face to face with the bars of a cage. A very _large_ cage. "A _very _bad feeling."

Peering into the darkness, he waited for his eyes to fully adjust to the low-light conditions on the other side of the bars, eventually allowing him to see the source of his ominous feeling. Looking at him with gigantic, blood-red eyes from the other side of the bars was an enormous fox with red-orange fur, nine long tails lazily whipping about in the air.

"**Hello, ningen,**" the fox greeted with a note to his voice that he couldn't immediately place.

He sighed, and summed up his situation in two words. "Well, _fuck_."

– – – – – – –

**Author's commentary: **I have a lot of entries for the thirteen years of Hiei's time with Helena outlined. They may or may not see the light, depending on where the story goes.

I do realize the message from the circle is ever so slightly corny, but it is a statement of intent phrased in a very particular way. Just remember: intent does not equal result. Just look at Dumbledore in the... more benign interpretations of his actions throughout canon.

The monks from the Demon War were primarily Japanese, and in the wake of the Demon War they attained sufficient respect that every child was taught the Japanese way of doing things... with a few western influences. Thus, contrary to reality, the first day of the Month of Affection, the first month in the Japanese calendar, equals January 1. All names backed up by wikipedia.

**Month of Affection: **Ichigatsu, January, also known as **_Mutsuki_**

**Month of New Life: **Sangatsu, March, also known as **_Yayoi_**

**Month of Water: **rokugatsu, June, also known as **_Minazuki_**

**Month of Falling Leaves: **hachigatsu, August, sometimes called the Month of Leaves. Known as **_Hazuki_**

**Month of the Gods: **jūgatsu, October. Known as **_Kaminazuki_ **or **_Kannazuki_**

**Month of Frost: **jūichigatsu, Novermber. Also known as **_Shimotsuki_**


	3. Ch3 Introducing, Naruto

_**Disclaimer: I do not own either Naruto or Harry Potter. They are the creations of Masashi Kishimoto and J.K. Rowling, respectively.**_

_**Welcome to the third chapter of The Gate of Time! This one comes in at 5592 words without author notes.  
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_**Do note: Still un-beta'd.**_

_**The reader stats so far have blown me away, considering this is my first fanfic. At the time of writing this note (29 Oct) my first fanfic has 565 views, 18 follows, 10 favorites, and 2 reviews 0.o**_

_**Share your thoughts and leave a review, would you kindly? **_

_**Without further ado, meet Naruto! **_

– – – – – –

_**2145 PRS, Kugatsu 1, 0915 hours**_

_**Konohagakure no Sato, Shinobi Academy**_

The atmosphere was stifling. The small stack of paper in his hands, no more than ten pages, felt like lead. He'd been standing here for a while as people were called in one by one for what seemed like hours. He didn't really pay all that much attention after the first twenty minutes, his mind drifting off to imagine all the cool things he would learn in the Academy.

"Uzumaki Naruto!"

He jumped in surprise, hands tightening around his stack of papers. When did the girl in front of him enter, or leave for that matter? Throwing the question out of his mind, he quickly entered the classroom. The classroom was rather standard for Academy fare, even if it was a bit on the small side. Twenty-eight descending rows of four desks each, aligned in columns of pairs with stairs at each end and in the middle. The far end of the classroom held three chalkboard side-by-side, and a teacher's desk occupied the rather large open area at the bottom. Two pairs of cabinets, currently open and empty, filled up the remaining space between the sides of the chalkboards and the wall.

He bounded down the stairs, shoulder-length blonde hair trailing behind him, stopping in front of the instructor's desk and all but pushing his paperwork in the man's face. An amused grin appeared on the chūnin's scarred face as he took the paperwork out of his hands.

Naruto waited patiently, or at least as patiently as a young Uzumaki could, for the chūnin to read his paperwork. He was going to score perfectly on this test and take his first steps on the road to becoming a real ninja, or his name wasn't Uzumaki Naruto, dattebayo!

After an eternity of bouncing on the balls of his feet, the chūnin nodded sharply and put his paperwork to the side of the desk, where all the properly filled out forms were located. He stood up and motioned for Naruto to follow him to the middle of the spacious open area.

"This test is simple, Uzumaki-san," he started to explain. "All you have to do is make a Ram seal and channel chakra. I'll take care of the rest," he said while putting his own hands in a Ram seal, allowing Naruto to copy the man. The chūnin poked, prodded, and shifted his fingers until he was satisfied that Naruto's Ram seal was an actual Ram seal. He stepped back and crossed his arms.

"Now, close your eyes and relax. Keep your hands in that position and turn your senses, your focus, inward. When your body starts tingling I want to know, okay?" the chūnin asked in a softer voice than he'd used earlier. Closing his eyes, Naruto nodded.

At first, nothing happened. The only tingling he felt was in his wrist and he was fairly sure that that was simply because of the, as of yet, unfamiliar position. There was an ache in his stomach – it'd been a while since his last helping of Ichiraku Ramen – and another in his feet from standing in line so long. A queasy feeling formed in his stomach, _what if I can't do this? _A short, hard slap to the back of his head broke his focus and he opened his eyes in surprise. _Did I fail? _

"You're far too tense, Uzumaki-san," the chūnin explained with a kind lilt to his voice. He held out a specially prepared ration bar to the prospective Academy student. "Don't worry, you're not the first nor will you be the last to be brought out of focus to calm down some before trying again. Here, have some food," the chūnin continued. "It isn't the ramen I've been told you're so fond of, but it'll do."

_Damn straight it isn't Ichiraku's!_ He thought, but chose not to speak. There was a knot in his stomach that prevented him from producing coherent speech. He grabbed the bar from the chūnin and barely got it out of its wrapping before he stuck it into his mouth and ate. A curious feeling spread throughout his body. He felt so light, like he could walk on clouds!

"Right, let's try again, shall we?" the chūnin asked, amusement colouring his voice. Psychotropics produced some very amusing changes in limited doses, like the special ration bars used solely for the Academy Acceptance Test. Naruto nodded, feeling _totally_ ready to go again. "Right. Put your hands in Ram."

Naruto complied, and a new round of poking and prodding and shifting occurred until the instructor was satisfied with his handseal.

"Alright Uzumaki-san, let's try again. Close your eyes, relax, and turn your focus inward. When your stomach starts tingling, I want you to let me known, alright?"

He nodded, muscles producing barely enough force to keep his eyelids covering his eyes. He still felt the ache in his wrist from the handseal, the ache in his feet from standing still so long, and the knot of nervousness in his stomach, but his brain put those inputs on the back-burner, rather than at the front of his mind. Which was the primary reason that the psychotropics were introduced in the Academy Acceptance at all. Even Rock Lee, a student with an extremely rare genetic disease preventing the normal projection of chakra, managed to channel _some _chakra under the influence. He'd never be able to perform even the most basic of Nin-,Gen-, or Fūin-jutsu, but that was what Tai- and Ken-jutsu were for. On the plus side, Lee would be practically immune to genjutsu, unless they were Sharingan, Kurama, or Yūhi induced.

Within ten seconds, Naruto felt the tingle in his stomach. "I've... I've got it," he whispered into the silence of the room. At least, he thought he had. It wasn't a tingle, per say, but more a combination of a warm breeze, a raging inferno, the cold that reminded him of the rare blizzard Hi no Kuni had, mud, a peculiar scent that he would come to know as ozone, and a hard, ordered surface. He felt the instructor putting a hand on each of his shoulders, the accompanying voice echoing, as if spoken from a distance in a mountain range.

"Focus on that feeling... and pull it out."

"Wakatta, sensei."

Naruto's face scrunched up in concentration, preparing to grasp the strange mixture of feelings inside him. His rather active imagination produced a pair of arms made from energy, what he always imagined chakra would look like, and closed the arms around the mixture of feelings within.

He tensed... and pulled.

The mixture of sensations spread throughout his body, settling in specific areas. The hard, ordered feeling settled in his legs, while his lungs and stomach played host to the feeling of ozone, the warm breeze, and the raging inferno. His left hand felt encased in dirt while his left reminded him of that time he fell into the river that flowed through Konoha. His ears were filled with the roar of wind and the raging flame, much like that one time that clothing store on Cherry Avenue burned down.

A loud crash rung throughout the room, overpowering the roar in his ears. He hadn't noticed that the explosion of chakra, easily more in ten seconds than what most active jōnin channelled in three months, had acted like a literal explosion centred on him. Desks were knocked down and strewn around, scorch marks lined the floor within three metres of him, and the chūnin instructor was sporting light burns on his hands and face. Fortunately, none of the paperwork was lost to the fire, still lazily drifting about from the wind generated by his chakra.

And were those tiny crystals on the floor where he stood? _That can't be_, he thought, _there's no such thing as crystal-natured chakra._

"Eurgh..." his temporary sensei moaned from where he landed on the floor. Naruto rushed over to the chūnin, worry lining his features, and shook his shoulder.

"Sensei, are you alright?" he asked, ignoring his nerves in favour of making sure he did no lasting damage.

"I'll be fine. This is nothing a med-nin can't fix in ten seconds," the chūnin answered. Naruto watched as he performed a cursory check of his body for more outward signs of damage. Finding nothing, the chūnin looked across the classroom and whistled appreciatively. "I think we can safely say you're going down the warrior path, rather than the ninja path."

Naruto furrowed his eyebrows. Warrior path? Ninja path? "I thought this was the ninja academy, sensei?"

He nodded, an unreadable expression on his face. "It is, partly. Most people forget, however, that there is a difference between _ninja_ and _shinobi_, and that this is the _shinobi_ academy," he explained. Seeing the confused look on his audience's face, he continued. "Shinobi is a catch-all phrase for anyone that uses chakra. In that vein, even samurai are shinobi, though call them that to their face and you will most likely have them try to kill you. Not even that long ago, it was publicly recognized that there are two paths to the shinobi way of life... warriors and ninja. Ninja are what people think of when they hear the word shinobi, the shadows manifest. Silent, unseen, very deadly, specializing in taking down a single target through assassination, blackmail, or sabotage. On the other hand, there's the warrior. Loud, flashy, extremely deadly, but focused on taking out large groups at a time. If you send a warrior after a single target, expect lots of collateral unless that target is very powerful themselves... in which case you might have to redraw the map, like with the fight between Shodai-sama and Uchiha Madara." He paused, a thoughtful frown on his face.

"Could you alert Hagane Kotetsu in the reception area that he needs to take over from me for a few minutes while I get this sorted out? He's got spiky black hair and a bandage over the bridge of his nose. Then please wait in the reception hall for me, okay?"

"Hai, sensei," he replied. Turning around and ascending the stairs, he passed the curious and slightly incredulous gaze of the girl waiting behind him in the line, her blonde hair and blue eyes just a shade paler than his own.

– – – – – – –

It had eventually taken the better part of an hour until he was picked up by his instructor, who he'd since learned was called Izumo.

"Uzumaki Naruto?" Izumo spoke to get his attention. "The Hokage wants to see you," he continued after receiving a nod in return. Motioning for the child to follow, Izumo walked the short distance to the door of the Academy. He hurried after the man. _Why does jiji want to see me? Did I do something wrong? _

"Did I do something wrong, sensei?" he asked subdued. He received a snort in return.

"You did something different that intrigued Hokage-sama when he heard of it. He simply wants to see your chakra for himself," Izumo explained kindly.

Once outside, he put one of his hands on Naruto's shoulder and made a half-ram seal with the other.

"_Shunshin no jutsu." _

Naruto gasped as he felt his entire being start to compress, as if being forced through a tube too narrow for his body to fit through. Before he realized what exactly was happening, the sensation was over, and he had to fight the urge to hurl his breakfast all over the floor. The chūnin looked on appreciatively.

"Not bad, kid. Most people do lose their lunch after that. Or breakfast, in your case."

"What in the name of Inari-sama was that, sensei?" he asked, still struggling to keep his food inside his stomach.

Izumo let out a small laugh, a borderline chuckle even, while moving to ascend the stairs to the Hokage's office. "That was the Body Flicker Technique, _shunshin no jutsu_. It's one of the many techniques available to you if you graduate," he explained.

"If, he says," Naruto groused, practically running to keep up with the man's far longer legs. Anxiety welled up within as they neared the top of the staircase, where the desk of the Hokage's secretary was located. _Sensei said I did something different, __not wrong per se, __but that doesn't always mean it's good._

The Hokage's secretary simply waved them through, not bothering to look up from her paperwork. Izumo knocked twice sharply in rapid succession, then knocked a third time after waiting a second. Apparently that was some sort of signal he wasn't yet aware of, for he could hear the old man's voice through the wooden frame of the door in response, calling them in.

The Hokage office looked just like the last time he'd seen it, on his seventh birthday a few months ago. He'd had to apply for early entry into the Academy due to his birthday being jūgatsu 10 when the academic year started the first monday of kugatsu. Two cabinets, shelves filled with scrolls and books, were placed against one wall. The grand, ornate oak desk was covered with paper, and three straight-backed oak chairs that were _really_ uncomfortable were placed in a semi-circle in front of the desk.

The two masked shinobi standing next to the old man's desk were new, though. The last time he was here the two shinobi were wearing all-black, but these wore only mostly black. Muted green patches interrupted the otherwise uniform field of black over their hearts, their shoulders, and hands.

"It's good to see you again, Naruto-kun," the old man greeted him warmly. "You may go, Izumo. Arrange for a D-rank clean-up, if you will."

"Of course, Hokage-sama," the instructor spoke from behind Naruto. He bowed and quickly left the room, closing the door behind him with a soft click.

"So, Naruto-kun," the Hokage said.

"Yes, old man?"

"Izumo told me you had a very different experience than the standard when first accessing your chakra. I thought it worth seeing myself. Can you show me?"

"Are you sure, old man? I kind of trashed the classroom," he asked nervously. A classroom was bad enough, but what would happen if he trashed the _Hokage Office_? He shivered involuntarily.

"It's fine, Naruto-kun. The office has been reinforced with seals. You could blast a full-power _Katon: Ryūka no jutsu_ in here for a minute and not see significant damage," the old man reassured him. He didn't know what a Dragon Fire jutsu was, but it sounded powerful... and the office _was_ made of wood. If it could stand up against fire for a minute it ought to be a pretty badass office, right?

He nodded, closed his eyes, and put his hands in the Ram seal. He turned his focus inward, trying to find the mixture of feelings within. This time he knew what he was looking for, knew how to bring it out, and knew how to reel it back in, so the roar of raging flames and howling winds in his ears as he released his chakra was far more subdued that it was not even an hour and a half ago. _Perhaps that'll go away completely in time? Would be nice to not turn fully or partially deaf every time I channel my chakra. _

Cracking an eye open after he reeled the chakra back in, he breathed a sigh of relief. Looks like the old man wasn't kidding when he said that the office could take some serious damage, compared to the classroom.

The Hokage hummed softly to himself. _That's very interesting... natural ice and crystal chakra production if I sensed it correctly? _

"Tsubame, Bakemono, if you will?" he said to the two shinobi next to him. In response, the two masked shinobi made their way to Naruto, fingers glowing green in much the same way as the doctor's hands had when he had to go to the hospital a few years earlier with a broken arm. Even so, the sheer speed at which they moved startled him, and he took a step back to re-orient himself. They started poking all over his body with their green-glowing fingers.

"Don't worry, Naruto-kun. They're just checking your tenketsu," the old man explained in a calming voice. _It would have been nice to know what tenketsu were, but the old man said it was alright so I guess what they're doing can't hurt. _

The two shinobi continued poking for a few highly uncomfortable minutes before they stood up to their full heights and returned to their place beside the Hokage's desk. The Hokage snapped his fingers, prompting a third masked shinobi, this one wearing the familiar all-black outfit, to appear from a corner.

"Take Naruto out into the waiting room," the old man commanded. The masked shinobi reached over Naruto for the doorknob, opening the door in almost perfect silence.

"Go," the masked stranger commanded curtly in a muffled voice, and Naruto hurried out the door with the shinobi close behind him. The pair walked past the secretary and settled in the waiting room, where the masked shinobi swiftly set up a silent vigil near the door.

Naruto took a seat and grabbed one of the many magazines strewn around the waiting area, sensing that his escort would not be in the mood for a conversation. Opening the magazine he settled down and started to read.

– – – – –

_**2145 PRS, Kugatsu 1, 1900 hours**_

_**Konohagakure no Sato, Office of the Hokage**_

By the time they were called back into the office, the queasy fullness of his stomach had long since disappeared, to be replaced by contended fullness. _Inari-sama, I thank you for allowing Ichiraku Ramen to continue existing. __I also thank you for the invention of the Kage Bunshin._

_N__ote to self: track down someone who can teach me Kage Bunshin. _

The old man was facing away from them, staring out the windows overlooking Konoha from his position in the sole comfortable chair in the office.

"Leave us, Tori," the old man called. Trails of smoke that hung above the air disappeared with his words, along with the ANBU that had escorted him. The smell of tobacco remained, however. "Have a seat, Naruto." Sitting down again after hours of sitting still, a minor miracle for him, was not something he wanted to do, but the old man wasn't in grandfather mode at the moment. He was talking as the Hokage, and as a citizen of Konoha one did not say 'no' to the Hokage.

"Naruto," he said, causing the child's head to whip around, seeing the Hokage staring at him with an unreadable expression. "What does being a shinobi mean to you?"

Naruto blinked. "uhh, what?"

"Why do you wish to be a shinobi, Naruto?" the old man clarified. "Why a shinobi, not a blacksmith, or carpenter, or artisan?"

Naruto leaned back, frowning. His first instinct was to yell 'because ninja are awesome' like most children his age and until recently even himself, but he suspected the Hokage wanted something... more. Silence reigned in the office while Naruto was thinking. The Hokage leaned forward, lacing his fingers underneath his chin as he waited.

"_I'll do anything to stop you from hurting my defenceless daughters, monster! No one will be able to stop me, not God, the Devil, or you!" _

Memories of that night were never fun, nearly dying will do that, but like the old man once said; 'every experience in life is something we can learn from, no matter how tragic'. And he had found something worth learning in the most harrowing night of his eight years of life.

"To protect those who can't protect themselves. To defend those who can't do so themselves by taking out that which threatens them," he eventually answered. The Hokage raised an eyebrow.

"That's surprisingly mature of you, Naruto-kun. What made you think that way?"

Naruto stayed silent, the only indication that he had heard him was a furrowing of the brow. "Ah," the Hokage exclaimed, realizing what was going on. "That night. Truly, that night was a boon wrapped in a nightmare."

"How so, Hokage-sama?" he asked, confused.

"Because it gave me a proper reason to remind the civilians that it is not their interpretation of the law that matters, it is _mine_. They would not learn and we had a completely new Civilian Council shortly after. Spending a month as you while you recovered put things into perspective for me."

_Wait, what? _"You spent a month as me?"

He nodded. "I certainly did, Naruto-kun. I don't think I'd have been able to pin a lot of the blame on the civilian council without it. You were recovering in the hospital for a month anyway." He shook his head. "We're getting off-track. The reason I asked you why you wanted to be a shinobi is because you have a chakra defect."

Naruto's heart felt like it skipped a few beats as he processed the man's words. "Wh- what do you mean?"

"Instead of producing regular chakra, you only produce elemental chakra," the old man explained. "Fortunately, you appear to generate all five elements so you can still learn most Ninjutsu, but Genjutsu, the art of illusions, will forever be out of your reach. Fūinjutsu, the sealing arts, will likely never be practical for you either."

"How does elemental chakra stop me from learning Genjutsu or Fūinjutsu?" he asked curiously.

The Hokage sighed. "Normally, chakra is generated as raw chakra, which can then be converted by the shinobi to a particular element or elements. This skill takes years to learn for most since the process is very complex, but your chakra has skipped that process entirely and is producing only elemental chakra. Genjutsu works by inserting imagery-laced chakra into the target's network. If your target's network is also purely elemental chakra like yours, it works fine. Otherwise the target's body will recognize that the illusion-carrying chakra is not the target's own... effectively making most people immune to any Genjutsu you cast. Seals work with raw chakra, and cannot be powered by elemental chakra."

Naruto exhaled slightly, relieved. At least he was still capable of performing Ninjutsu. Illusions could be powerful, as he knew from first-hand experience two years ago, but he didn't think he had the finesse needed to properly use Genjutsu. He enjoyed smashing through things too much.

Fūinjutsu he'd never heard of, but hearing about his inability to perform it made his blood roil and rage, and his stomach to heat up as if in violent disapproval of the situation. If only to get rid of that highly uncomfortable feeling, as if his veins were frozen and on fire at the same time, he would become the best Fūinjutsu specialist in recorded history and beyond trying to find a way for him to be able to use it!

As he made this declaration to himself, his stomach warmed up. He looked down and poked his stomach, curiously. The Hokage watched as the hesitation in his eyes turned to conviction, then to determination.

"What are you doing, Naruto-kun?" the Hokage asked when he saw Naruto's hand move towards his stomach.

"When you told me that I likely could never perform Fūinjutsu, my stomach felt weird, as if it was angry that I couldn't perform it," Naruto clarified, shocking the old man. "When I vowed to myself that I would find a way to overcome this obstacle and find a way for me to use Fūinjutsu my stomach warmed up as if agreeing with me. Do you know why?"

"I'm pretty sure I do, Naruto-kun. However, I promised your father to not tell you until you were at least genin. You're welcome to come to me if you think you have it figured out, though," he said.

Naruto nodded. _At least he stopped trying to hide that he knew things about me. _

"However, before we get off-track _again_, I will make the same deal with you as I did with another student last year, one by name of Rock Lee, who also has a chakra defect," the Hokage said, expression grave. "I'll enroll you into the academy, and tell the teachers to not penalize you for your inability to perform Genjutsu and Fūinjutsu. To compensate, you will graduate with excellent marks in Taijutsu, Kenjutsu, Stealth, and Trapping, while graduating with general academic scores less than five percent from the maximum value.

When the day of your graduation is here and you graduated with these scores, I'll allow you to become a shinobi of Konoha. Should you manage to take first place or tied first place in everything except general academics, I'll even throw in a scroll from my personal library."

"Really?" Naruto half-yelled, leaning forward from excitement. _A scroll from the Hokage's personal library? HELL YES'TTEBAYO! _

"Naturally," the Hokage assured. "So do we have a deal?"

Naruto nodded. "We do," he said, straightening. When he next spoke, his voice was more official and sounded as if it was spoken from a distance. "Sandaime Hokage Sarutobi Hiruzen, I, Uzumaki Naruto, do hereby agree to try my utmost best to accomplished the agreed-upon academic results, as verbally stated one minute and fifteen seconds ago." He slumped down again and looked as if he was shaking off the cobwebs inside his head.

"Naruto-kun, what was that?" the Hokage asked.

"The reason I don't like making promises. It feels weird and it seems to bind me to my promise. It always happens when I make a promise and I've not yet found a way to stop it."

The Hokage looked at Naruto with a shrewd eye. _That fits the myths, at least. _

"I think that's all for tonight, Naruto-kun. Your caretaker must be worried sick by now."

Naruto rolled his eyes at the mention of his caretaker. He was certain that his caretaker, the orphanage matron, had a few screws loose. The Hokage pressed a button on the bottom of his desk, causing a black-clad ANBU to appear next to the desk. "Walk Naruto home, if the matron asks where he was, say that he was in a meeting with me."

"As you command, Hokage-sama," the muffled voice of the ANBU droned monotonously. The ANBU opened the doorknob and motioned for Naruto to follow.

"I'll see you again sometime, Naruto-kun."

Naruto turned his head. "See you later, old man," he said before walking out the door escorted by the ANBU.

When he was certain that Naruto had left, the Hokage stood up and swiped a hand across his desk, activating the privacy seals. He walked to the middle of the office, bit his left humb and swiftly performed a short series of handseals.

"_Kuchiyose no jutsu_," he said as he slammed his blooded hand on the floor. A four foot tall monkey appeared in a cloud of smoke.

"Greetings, Hiruzen-sama," the monkey said.

"Greetings to you too, Mukubili," he returned. "I'll cut to the chase, can the Monkey Clan deliver a message to the Toad Clan?"

After a few moments reflection, Mukubili nodded. "We can, but only because the Monkeys and Toads are allied summons."

"That's good," he exclaimed, relieved. "Get a message to the toads as soon as possible, Jiraiya needs to come back to Konoha to check on the seal."

"We will do so, Hiruzen-sama. If that is all?"

He nodded. "It is, Mukubili. Thank you."

She waved it off. "It is a pleasure serving you, Hiruzen-sama. Until we meet again," she said as she disappeared in another puff of smoke. _I hope you receive this message soon, my student. We need to know if it's breaking out or not. _

– – – –

**2145 PRS, Kugatsu 1, 2210 hours**

**Konohagakure no Sato, Mitokado Orphanage room 342**

The orphanage light had gone out ten minutes ago, and in the darkness Naruto, dressed in the standard orphanage issue lime-green pyjamas, allowed himself relaxation from the day's worries. From anxiety waiting in the Academy line, to fear he had failed the test... to the conversation with jiji, and finally worry over what could be inside him.

He had his suspicions, of course. He had found out about the seal when he was three, but jiji said he didn't know what its purpose was. When he was five, he asked again and got the same answer. Jiji wasn't making as good an effort to hide his thoughts this time though, and he could see that his jiji wasn't telling the truth. It hurt, then. Now, he wasn't so sure. If he really was what he thought he was, then he could see why jiji had wanted to keep it hidden from him. After the... incident of his sixth birthday, he wasn't barred from the library anymore, and he'd tried to find things surrounding his family name and/or events that occurred around his birth. He found a few mentions of the Uzumaki clan of Uzu no Kuni and the official record of the Kyūbi attack on Jūgatsu 10, then six years ago. Exactly on his birthday. Despite the books recording that the Kyūbi was killed, he had a feeling that the seal on his stomach was keeping the Kyūbi back. He had no way to confirm, of course, but he'd take up Jiji's offer sometime soon, once he got past the emotional rollercoaster that was today.

It was with these thoughts in mind that Naruto finally closed his eyes and succumbed to the grasp of Morpheus.

– – – –

_This dream,_ Naruto thought quietly, _sucks. _Instead of the usual anatomically impossible Taijutsu moves or physics-defying Ninjutsu that were common presences in his dreams, saving princesses demanded the best after all, he got a sewer.

A clean sewer, to be sure, but a sewer none the less. It was the weirdest sewer ever, too. Nothing at all like the Konoha sewer where he sometimes hid to escape the aftermath of a prank. The water, ankle-high as far the eye could see, just slid off his hands when he tried to keep some cupped in his hands. The pipe he was in seemed to be a main pipe, larger than either of the pipes he could see branching off the one he was in at seemingly random angles and intervals. The ceiling was covered by two pipes, one far larger than the other, the bigger pulsing an angry red, the smaller pulsing a calm blue.

Seeing that the pulses seemed to be travelling in one direction, he decided to ignore the minor feeling of dread and follow the path of the pulses.

After a few minutes of walking along the sewer tunnels, he noticed that they all started to come together at a single point instead of the seemingly random branching present at his landing zone. Less then five minutes after he made this observation, he could hear voices ahead. He strained his ears, unconsciously channelling chakra to them.

"**...cond quadrant will stabil... version of unnatured chakra,**" the first voice said. This voice was a deep baritone, making his chest rumble from the clearly felt suppressed power in the voice.

"That's all fine and dandy," the second voice said in a light baritone, sounding much like Izumo-sensei. "But we don't need a chakra naturization seal, we need a chakra de-naturization seal that accepts elemental chakra."

_Are they talking about my defect? _"Hello?" he called.

"Over here, Naruto-dono!" the light baritone replied from just around the corner up ahead. _-Dono? What the hell? _

When he rounded the corner, he came upon the weirdest sight in his eight short years of life. Two men sitting in agura opposite each other, one on either side of the gigantic bars, with a projection of numerous kanji hovering between two of the bars. He wondered why they didn't just cross the bars, they were easily wide enough for two people side by side. The man on the other side of the bars, black hair with prominent red streaks complementing piercing green eyes, snorted. Naruto focused his eyes on the man, _what was so funny? _

"**This is a visual representation of your seal, kit,**" the man spoke in his powerful baritone. "**Since this is my jail, I can't pass no matter how big the bloody bars are.**"

Jail? That didn't make sense, though upon closer inspection the man had whisker marks just like his on his cheeks... and he'd been told more than once that his smile made him appear like a fox. So... fox-like in a jail. If the myths surrounding the Kitsune were anything remotely true, like the library books claimed, than he could only be the Kyūbi in a huma...

"**Glad to hear you're not completely moronic and ignorant of the, mostly true, myths surrounding the Kitsune, kit," **the man continued, interrupting his thoughts. "**It's better than I thought you were capable of.**"

"How did you know what I was thinking?" he asked. Sure, he wanted to rail at the Kyūbi for the first six years of his life, but knowing if the Kyūbi could read his mind was more important at the moment in his opinion. He turned to the second man, his blue eyes focusing on the man's purple eyes framed by elbow-length spiky red hair. "And for that matter, who are you?"

"I'll answer both questions, in that order," the man said. "First off, this is, as you've correctly guessed, the seal housing the Kyūbi no Kitsune, and as such it has direct access to your chakra network even if Kyūbi-sama can't actually do much with your chakra network because of the aforementioned seal. We hypothesized that your first unlocking of chakra reached deep enough inside you for a mental link to form. That is, the Kyūbi can, if he wants to, see what you see, feel what you feel, and hear what you hear. It's not supposed to be the other way around, but evidently there was some emotional leak in the Hokage Office."

"So that's why my blood felt like boiling and my stomach heated up!" Naruto interjected.

The pair nodded in eerie unison. "**Indeed. It's not as bad for you as I know you're thinking now, though. We'll talk about that later, we've got a few years before shit hits the fan.**"

Naruto sighed, relieved, though that last bit sounded far too ominous for his liking. Seeing the red-haired man open his mouth again, Naruto turned to face him.

"Secondly, I am Gogyōko Hiei," he continued as if there had been no interruption. "Why I'm in the seal is something I'm not entirely certain about, but what is relevant is that I am, effectively, your cousin from the future."

– – – – –

Translations:

**Kugatsu**: September

**Jūgatsu**: October

**Wakatta**: I understand

**Agura**: also called **Anza**, agura is known to the western world of 'sitting cross-legged', which is a decidedly more unwieldy phrase than agura. (source: wikipedia)

Jutsu:

**Shunshin no jutsu**: D-rank supplementary technique. Depending on usage, it performs either of two functions: high-speed transportation and teleportation. When the user has an image of him or herself standing where he needs to be the technique acts as uncomfortable teleportation. When this image is not present in the user's mind, the technique is merely chakra-assisted running.

The required detail for the mind's eye image can only be obtained by having been there in the first place. Pictures or videotapes are not enough, though Yamanaka memory transfer is. This contrasts the s_hunshin_ from the renowned _Hiraishin_, the latter of which requires naught but the seal-tag to act as an anchor for the teleport and actually costs _less_ chakra than the _shunshin._

**Katon: Ryūka no jutsu**:Canon.

**Kuchiyose no jutsu**: Canon.

**A/N: Temporal family member bombshell! He's sort-of related through Naruto's maternal aunt, Kushina's older sister, if you hadn't paid attention last chapter. It gets muddy with genetic engineering. **

**There's a few things I should note here about Naruto and the world around him.**

**Firstly, my main gripe about Naruto... if he can't learn it by doing, he's as dumb as a rock, doesn't apply here. He won't be overly intelligent like Shikamaru, but he won't be the complete idiot he was in canon. Following the replacement of the Civilian Council Naruto was treated like a normal civilian, even if they were colder to him than they would have been had he not been the Jinchūriki.**

**Secondly, I decided to incorporate some of the elements from 'A Month as Naruto Uzumaki', by Angel of Snapdragons (rather good read, go read it now :D). In particular, the Uchiha's status as 'mostly decimated' though I've kept a few more alive than in the aforementioned story, the Civilian Council (replaced), and a few others that will likely be mentioned in-story. **

**Thirdly, by opening the Temporal Gates Hiei influenced the recent past, specifically from Naruto's birth forward. Some butterfly effects have already been felt, like that attack on Naruto's person which didn't happen in canon to the best of my recollection, and Naruto's chakra that now lacks non-elemental chakra. Which is required for, say, shadow clones. **

**Fourth, it isn't particularly clear in-story, but what happened on Naruto's sixth birthday was the cliché attack and stabbing, where that quote was uttered by one of the fathers involved, after which Sarutobi Hiruzen decided to look into _everything_ surrounding Naruto... including medical files. Cue most of the events of 'A Month as Naruto Uzumaki'. There are differences between that story and the implied events of mine, but if they're relevant they'll pop up **

**In most fanfics where this happens, this is where the Kyūbi makes it initial appearance. In this fic, however, the mindscape imposed upon Naruto is not a replacement for his original mindscape, merely an artificial construct that's another, seperate layer to his mindscape designed to catch Naruto should Naruto attempt to enter his mindscape. The trigger is specific intent to enter the mindscape. In most cases, the Kyūbi would have dragged Naruto in the seal to make a deal with Naruto. The stabbing was in the head, however, and Kyūbi was too busy being exceedingly careful repairing the damage to his brain to stop Naruto reaching his natural mindscape. Maybe the details of the attack will be released at a later point, maybe not. It depends on the nosiness of several characters.  
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**Lobotomized containers are bad containers, after all. Perfectly capable of holding you locked up while not dying. That also means that the sewer is a part of the Seal. Make of that what you will. I doubt it'll ever become important though I don't tend to plan ahead a lot. **

**Fifth, try to guess Kyūbi's identity. It's not that hard, I think. **

**See you next time!**

ū


	4. Ch4: Awakening of a Slumbering Giant

**Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or Naruto.**

**Warning: This chapter is rather heavy on dialogue, and I'm not the best at writing dialogue. Elements that are capitalized, Wind, Water, etc are chakra natures. Uncapitalized elements are the naturally occurring ones.**

**Drop a review, would you kindly? **

– – – – –

**2145 PRS, Kugatsu 1, 2211 hours**

**Konohagakure no Sato, Hakke no Shiki Fūin**

Four eyes, two green two purple, shone in amusement as they gazed upon the blond-haired boy that was trying to get his brain could hear the incredulity from their host's mind through the still-active sensory link that was somehow established when their blond host first accessed his chakra. They'd actually been deep in discussion on the method by which the link was established when they heard the near-blasphemous words come from the Sandaime's mouth. _"Fūinjutsu, the sealing arts, will likely never be practical for you either."_

An Uzumaki that was unable to perform Fūinjutsu? Absolutely preposterous. Yet, somehow the case. It was a sobering experience, the first true indication that the timeline he'd landed in was not exactly equal to his own. They'd almost immediately set out to craft a seal that could accept elemental chakra, for apparently the Kyūbi felt the same way, but that didn't change the situation. In his original timeline, Naruto could activate seals without issue even though actually crafting them was beyond him due to his limited intelligence.

This Naruto was above-par in intelligence, but couldn't activate seals. The irony was almost palpable, and led him to wonder what else was different. He'd need to convince Naruto to allow him access to his memories, not just his thoughts, or have him read history books with the link open. Such a shame that memories of the host were unavailable to him while in the seal, no doubt protection to prevent personality adjustments by the Kyūbi.

When the silence continued to stretch, piercing green eyes turned to lock onto the wild red mane leaning against the bars of the cage. "**You never did say how you managed this, ningen**," the Kyūbi said, snapping Naruto out of his daze. A single incredulous thought rang through the cage, courtesy of the still-active link. '_That's not the relevant question here!' _

Hiei snorted. "Sixteen collector seals linked to four runic power wells connected to an Eight Gates array," he replied brusquely.

The Kyūbi raised an eyebrow. "**And how did you manage to link seals with the runes? We determined that was impossible back then**," the Kyūbi asked, his tone demanding an answer.

"Let me guess, you tried Kanji and the runic alphabets?" he asked in return. The Kyūbi nodded. "Yeah, that's what I did as well at first," he continued. "But then I had an embarrassing experience that shall never be repeated verbally, ever, that led me to remembering that a lot of Japanese characters have Chinese analogues. The characters that make up kyōtyō in their Chinese forms plus _ehwaz_ equals rune-seal linking."

"**Huh. I must admit, we never thought that Hanzi would be useful for sealing, though in hindsight we should have. Hanzi is the basis for Kanji after all,**" the Kyūbi admitted with a grimace. He turned an eye toward his host. "**You've stayed silent longer than I thought you would, gaki.**"

"I was hoping to get some information by listening," the blonde admitted. Two red eyebrows belonging to two different individuals rose. _He has potential,_ they both thought. "Fat lot of good that did me," he groused.

"Ask thy questions, Naruto-dono," Hiei said semi-dramatically. "And we shall endeavour to answer to the best of our capabilities."

"How in the name of Inari-sama are you my cousin? Where were you all my life? How are you in the seal when I was pretty sure only fuzzbutt here would be in here if it was what I was thinking it was?" he asked, reminding the redhead behind the bars of a young girl with curly brown hair in the way that he'd spoken faster than most humans can follow and without stopping to breathe. Not that breathing was necessary within the space of the seal or mind, but the mind was a creature of routine and this didn't register to the blonde. He could ignore the fuzzbutt comment. Kushina had called him far worse whenever she came in her seal to rant.

Hiei chuckled lightly. "All valid questions. I will endeavour to answer them to the best of my abilities." He held up three fingers.

"Firstly, I am technically your half-cousin. I was created by artificial insemination and growth followed by massive genetic engineering performed by Orochimaru of the Sannin. As a result, I technically have five or so fathers with only a single mother. That mother was Uzumaki Kushinada, who was named after a character appearing in the Susano'o myth, similar to your own mother and my 'mother's' younger sister, Kushina. Rather unoriginal, but I didn't name them.

"Secondly," he said as he ticked off a finger. "In my original timeline, which I'm beginning to increasingly suspect is no longer accurate in details though I hope still holds generally, I was vat-grown at an accelerated rate until I was physically fifteen... approximately at your graduation date, four years from now. I spent the next two years as a test subject for Orochimaru as he identified what went wrong _this_ time before breaking out and fleeing to Konoha. It was only after that that I met my original timeline's Naruto.

"Thirdly, while I don't know why I am here in the seal, I can guess. My best guess is that things are sufficiently different that Orochimaru never developed the program for the 'perfect shinobi', and as such never developed me. My soul, mind, and chakra still needed a place to go, however. Enter, you, the closest relative to me. Your own mind and soul were powerful enough to resist mine for long enough that they looked at an alternate, easier path... and lo, you have a seal!" He shrugged. "That's my best guess, anyway. Time travel is... really weird stuff."

Naruto snorted. "I guess. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt for now," he said before his mind latched onto a particular part of the answer. "You knew my mother?" he asked, perking up.

Hiei shook his head. "No, she was dead more than a decade before I was born in the lab. I do know _of_ her, though." He paused with a thoughtful look on his face. "Not a lot, admittedly. In my timeline, she was Uzumaki Kushina, one of the three Kunoichi in recorded history to reach the hallowed SS-rank status. The other two have counterparts that should be in your class or the year above you. She was known under a host of titles, including the **Akai Chisio no Habanero**, **Benishinigami**, and **Aka no Shi**. Famous for the decimation of an entire army group of Iwa nin during the Third War, eclipsed only by the Yondaime Hokage who took out two. For your information, an army group is approximately two _thousand_ shinobi."

Naruto looked on with stars in his eyes. _His mom was AWESOME'ttebayo!_ He rapped his head with his knuckles. Why did that tic have to resurface now when he thought it was gone last year?

"That said, there's a lot of bad, _bad_, shit headed our way if the general story of my timeline holds here," Hiei continued with a grave face.

Naruto stared at him, getting slightly unnerved by the intensity of that gaze, the gaze that he'd seen on the matron once before when the anniversary of her husband's death, Sangatsu 30, rolled around. He gulped. Whatever this was, it was _seriously_ bad news. "What kind of bad stuff?" he asked rather more timidly than he'd have liked, afraid that the answer would be even worse than he imagined.

"End of the world type scenario."

And so it was. First the damn villagers about the fox until two years ago, now this? He couldn't just catch a break in his life, could he? No matter, he'd shoulder through it, he was Uzumaki Naruto and he just did not give up when the stakes were against him!

Hiei and the Kyūbi frowned. The flames suddenly appearing in their host's eyes were unsettling, particularly for Hiei who was reminded of two particularly youthful shinobi. Even more unsettling was the fact that the mind-seal link was silent during the moments of what they guessed to be introspection. This link, represented in-seal as a giant flat-screen TV and headset was getting more and more curious every second they spent in its presence. Somewhere in the past hour or so it had mutated from a one-way into a two-way link with an option to talk mentally, rather than every thought going across the link. Much like a telephone, really, which was odd because in his original timeline they weren't invented for another four years.

Naurto turned his eyes to look his two tenants in his eyes. "I assume you've got things planned?"

The Kyūbi scoffed. "**Of course. When you unlocked your chakra, we were here in the seal and could feel the absolute lack of elemental chakra. We've been planning ever since and decided to pull you into the seal when you fell asleep. Expect this to occur every night as we teach you in subjects the Academy won't teach. We'll pull you in as soon as you close your eyes, spend a few hours teaching, though mostly the ningen here, then kick you out to induce a REM sleep, the only stage of sleep that matters to the relaxation of the human mind since the Rikudo Sennin.**"

"Naturally, while you are at the Academy we'll be in here brainstorming ways to get me out of the seal," Hiei continued. "I want to have a true body for myself again, damnit."

"What will you be teaching me?" Naruto asked, warily. The fact that the Kyūbi seemed cooperative didn't necessarily mean that he'd be _nice_ about it.

"**The exact subjects will have to wait until after the Academy properly starts so we have an idea of what they will be teaching. No need to teach something twice, after all. What we'll be working on in the meantime is chakra control,**" the redhead behind the bars concluded with a terrifying grin. "**We'll talk more tomorrow. Now leave!" **he shouted, punting Naruto out of the seal and into Dreamland.

– – – – –

**2145 PRS, Kugatsu 2 0830 hours**

**Konohagakure no Sato, Outside Mitokado Orphanage front door**

"**Kit,**" a deep baritone voice said from within his mind as he tried to rub the sleep from his eyes."**Can you hear me? Just think your answer with intent to talk to me or the ningen here.**"

'_A little bit softer please. You're giving me a headache." _

"_This better?" _a second, lighter, voice sounded from the same place at a much more agreeable volume.

_'Much better. So last night wasn't a dream at all?'_

"_Nope. You may want to wish it was, though." _

He gulped. This didn't sound at all good. '_Why?' _he asked uncertainly.

"**Because you don't produce any non-elemental chakra at all, we're going to have to improvise,**" the Kyūbi said. Naruto didn't especially like the way the word 'improvise' was said.

_'What do you mean?' _

"_Normally, _Hiei started to explain, "_someone would be taught how to wall walk before moving onto water walking and stop there. The extended version includes performing a handstand on senbon, splitting a waterfall, scaling a waterfall and splitting a lava stream. All of that uses non-elemental chakra, however, and we're not _quite_ sure how your elemental chakra will react to the standard techniques, with some exceptions." _

"**However, there **_**are**_** various means for you to gain control of your chakra**," the Kyūbi took over seamlessly. It was almost as if they'd been practising this. "**The first is to **_**always**_** keep an eye on it. How does it flow when you're calm? When you're agitated? How does it react to certain situations? Knowing all of these things will help you control your own chakra." **

"_Then there are, obviously, a few things we _can_ do with your chakra. I'm fairly confident that you can lift water from the stream and use it to create balls of water over your palm, for example._

"_But first, we need to know what types of chakra you have available, and to do that we need you to channel some chakra. If at all possible, in one of the training grounds."_

_'Didn't you notice when I channelled chakra in front of the old man yesterday, you felt my lack of non-elemental chakra didn't you?' _

An awkward cough sounded from the area that he had now identified belonged to the seal. "_We did, but we were distracted from making a full elemental analysis by a discussion regarding my past, your future, and the very curious mind-seal link that we're now using to communicate._

"_This is, of course, in addition to me trying to figure out a way to get out of the seal and us both trying to figure out a way for you to use seals with non-elemental chakra because the idea of an Uzumaki that can't use seals is blasphemous. Even the Kyūbi agrees with me on this one." _

"**Yes, I do. What many people don't know is that I and a small handful of others practically created the sealing arts, ****_and_**** that my family married into what would become the Uzumaki clan.**"

'_Wait, you had family?' _the blonde asked. The Bijū were masses of chakra with an intelligence according to one of the books he had read in the library, how could they have family?

"**What even less know is that we Bijū were fully human once with spouses and children. And, in my case, a mistress or three that my wife approved of,**" the Kyūbi added after a while. Naruto swore he could feel a perverted grin on the furball's face. "**My fully-human children married other humans and would, a few decades later, become the first of the Uzumaki. Now, kit, you have a training ground to find. Get to it.**"

He nodded, and set out to find a training ground.

– – – – – –

**2145 PRS, Kugatsu 2, 0900 hours**

**Konohagakure no Sato, Training Ground 41**

Hiei and the Kyūbi nodded in satisfaction as the mind-seal link, such a curious thing, allowed them to see the splendour of the empty Training Ground 41. It wasn't a very popular training ground for various reason, despite having a bit of all major terrain types in Hi no Kuni. One factor that worked against its popularity was its distance from the village proper, being located right against the outer wall of Konoha. Despite this, they felt it should have been more popular. It had trees, a river, a medium-size waterfall, and a sizeable open field allowing for all types of jutsu and control exercises to be performed using naught but the material provided on the training ground itself.

"**We're going to skip the physical conditioning since the Academy will do that for us,**" the Kyūbi began. "**So, channel some chakra, kit. We'll tell you when to stop." **

He nodded uncertainly, the seriously messed up classroom still fresh on his mind. As he put his hand in the Ram seal, he had a stray thought that he decided to posit to his two tenants. '_What _is_ chakra anyway?' _

"**Chakra is the result of heightened bioelectricity plus a little mysticism,**" the Kyūbi answered curtly. It only generated more questions in Naruto's mind.

'_What is bioelectricity? How does mysticism enter the picture?' _

"_Bioelectricity is the electricity your body produces to communicate with itself. Your brain sends an electrical signal along your nervous system to a body part signalling that it has to perform an action, like muscle contraction. Likewise, nerve endings send electrical signals to your brain to inform you of something that hurts, that you're touching something and how that something feels, and so on. I'm sure it's covered in the Academy since it's pretty useful to stunning people, among other things._

"_The mysticism enters the picture because chakra wasn't always chakra, but that's a story for another time. Now channel some damn chakra, Naruto-dono." _

_'Right,' _he thought to his tenants as he prepared the mental arms again. This time it only took two seconds for the familiar roar to fill his ears at half the volume of when he showed it to the Hokage. After fifteen seconds, he heard both his tenants call for him to stop. The training ground was mostly undamaged excepting the small crystals growing under his feet and a few patches of ice that were quickly melting under the rising Konoha sun.

"**You've got curious chakra, kit. Then again, you've got curious circumstances with both me and your time-travelling cousin inside you. You natively produce no less than eight elements, three of which are combination elements usually locked to bloodlines." **

"_That'd be my fault,"_ Hiei admitted with a slightly embarrassed tone. "_The many male sperm and stem-cell donors used in my construction kind of cancelled each other out, leaving me with elements usually unique to Kekkai Genkai. Specifically, Scorch, Crystal, and Ice."_

_'So those crystals in the classroom weren't my imagination,' _the blonde mused. '_That's good to know.'_

"**Quite. You do produce the five basic elements native, though you seem to have affinities towards the elements of the storm, that is Water, Wind, and Lightning. Normally you'd not have three affinities until your thirties, but with my awesomeness inside you how could you be any less in the chakra department?**" Naruto got the impression that the Kyūbi was grinning a very smug grin when he said that. He supposed it wasn't entirely unfounded, what with being the Kyūbi and all.

'_So how will this work?' _

"_Rather simply, actually," _Hiei said blandly. "_First, you need to be able to channel chakra without the Ram seal, and that comes with practice. Second, the method we've devised for isolating chakra natures is to simply dump your chakra into something while remaining in mental contact with it, then figuring out which part of your chakra 'feels' similar to whatever you're dumping chakra into and trying to take back all other types. After that we can work on elemental control for that elementthe traditional way. We've got a few years to get at least one down, though I wouldn't be entirely surprised if you managed two or more by the time you graduate." _

_'I could feel various things settling in parts of my body when I channelled my chakra before the old man yesterday, why don't I just do that again and try to bring out each nature?' _

"**Because chakra feels different inside the body than it does outside, and it just adds unnecessary difficulty for you. Additionally I'm not entirely comfortable with, say, Scorch or Wind chakra existing in pure forms inside my host's body when you don't know what they feel like and can do. If you die then I do too, and I prefer to keep living."** The Kyūbi paused. "**Ningen, you produce the three combination elements natively. Shed some light on this,**" the Kyūbi ordered.

"_Very well," _Hiei answered neutrally. "_Pure scorch chakra inside your body without knowing how to tone down the intensity or immediately expel it from you body will turn your organs into dust. Almost happened to me," _Hiei added with a grimace that went unseen by his host. "_Ice and Crystal respond similar to each other, namely turning your body into a statue. A very _fragile_ statue. I don't produce it but I can imagine that Wind chakra will slice your insides up to such a point that not even we, your tenants, can fix it." _

_'Right,' _Naruto thought. _'Wind chakra inside my body equals bad news. Why won't water or lightning do the same?' _

"**Because your body consists of 70% water, by volume, gaki. Unless you fill it with so much that your body literally explodes it's not a problem, and that is one of the few chakra natures that you can instinctively relax. Your bladder is good for more than just urine, you know?"**

"_As for lightning, flooding your system with Lightning chakra is the first stage to the _Raiton no Yoroi_ of the Yotsuki clan in Kaminari no Kuni. It hurts but it's not lethal unless you keep it up for literally _days," Hiei clarified. "_Let's get to work, shall we?"_

– – – – –

**2145 PRS, Kugatsu 8, 0900 hours**

**Konohagakure no Sato, Shinobi Academy**

Naruto would have liked to bounce in his seat from excitement following the end of the agonizing week between the Acceptance Test and the first classes, but found that he lacked the energy to do so. His two sensei and tenants were slave-drivers, but he could feel his chakra responding much more fluently to his every whim. Keeping an eye on it constantly was hard work, but the pay off was noticeable after only a week!

As the children around him chatted about various things involving their lives, what they were going to be taught at the Academy, and any eventual plans after the Academy let out for today, he sat there desperately trying to not fall asleep. He'd pushed too hard with trying to get his water-natured chakra to respond to his wishes last night, and paid the price. He was so close to isolating his Water chakra that he lost track of time at the riverside, only noticing how late it actually was when the sun went down completely. His sensei had pulled him into the area they had dubbed the 'sealscape' and taught him until they deemed it fit for him to enter REM sleep, the only form of sleep that they considered relevant to keep his mind fully rested. His need to go to the Academy cut his REM sleep period by thirty minutes, and he was feeling that now.

"**Suck it up, kit,**" the Kyūbi suddenly said from the seal. He groaned softly, he wished they never figured out how to open and close the mind-seal link by themselves, though he suspected that they needed his permission to set that system up in the first place and he wasn't quite sure when they tricked him into agreeing to it.

"_This should teach you that, to most ninja and practically every politician, doublespeak is a way of life Naruto-dono," _his second tenant chimed in, not bothering to correct his host. "_Additionally, if you want to be an idiot and stay up late than we'll be more than happy to... _ensure_ that you know exactly how idiotic it is." _

_'I get it, Hiei,' _he said with not a little bit of exasperation. '_Doublespeak?' _he asked after a few second's thought, not having heard the word before.

"_It's when you say A-1, but mean A-2, A-3, or even B. There's more than one description of it, including 'underneath the surface', but I prefer doublespeak."_

_'Ah.'_

The door to the classroom slammed open, drawing Naruto's attention back to the world outside his body, and a man of average height with dark brown hair in a ponytail carrying a thick stack of paper walked in, the man's dark eyes scanning the classroom that had calmed down upon seeing him enter. "Good morning students!" he called out after an approving nod, dropping the paper on the solitary teacher's desk near the chalkboard. Naruto eyed the large cardboard box next to the desk that he was fairly certain wasn't there two minutes ago. _'Say, do summoning sealing arrays exist?' _he asked his tenants. "_Yes they do,"_ came the swift reply. "_There's even a technique for it, it's called 'Kuchiyose no jutsu'. It requires non-elemental chakra however." _

_'Damn.' _

"Uzumaki Naruto?" the chūnin called out. Naruto waved his hand, startled. Apparently he'd missed the chūnin introducing himself and taking attendance. He scowled, he'd promised the Hokage he'd do his absolute best in the Academy, not zone out as soon as class began even if it was to ask his tenants a question.

"Here, sensei." The chūnin's eyes locked on his form and narrowed slightly, before giving a curt nod. Shortly after, he rolled up his scroll and reached into the box from which he withdrew multiple armfuls of books. He swiftly moved up the stairs to give one copy to each of the students. When Naruto's turn came he tried enthusiastically snatching the book from the sensei's hand, but last night's escapade left him with little energy to do so.

"Rough night, Naruto-san?" the chūnin asked with an amused tone, recognizing the symptoms from his own time at the Academy and beyond.

"Too excited to sleep, sensei," he answered smoothly as he cracked his book open. He skimmed through the pages, looking at the pictures and reading the text directly surrounding the picture if the picture was interesting enough.

The teacher clapped his hands, drawing his attention away from the book. "I am Umino Iruka, and I will be your instructor for the next four years," the man said, drawing a chorus of 'hello' and 'good morning Umino-sensei' from the gathered children. "The textbooks you have been given are yours to keep, and you will be given a new copy every year. Other than these four copies, the textbooks aren't free, so losing, damaging, or otherwise making your textbook unusable to the point it requires replacement will cost extra," he said firmly.

"There is a lot of material to cover until graduation, so I'll start by giving a brief overview of everything I'll be teaching you in the next four years. After lunch, we will be moving outside for taijutsu practice. I'll be taking questions while I give you your overview." Almost immediately a hand shot up from somewhere in the class. "Ask away, Kizashi-san."

"Why would we be practising taijutsu on the first day, Umino-sensei?" the boy, pink hair indicating that he was a member of the well-to-do civilian clan Haruno, asked.

"Because taijutsu, like all areas of the shinobi life, is split up in two categories; the Art and the Field. The Art of taijutsu is, indeed, hand-to-hand combat and what most people think of when they hear the word 'taijutsu'. The Field of taijutsu truly makes the 'body' part of 'body techniques' its own, and encompasses taking care of your body. Nutrition, diets, callisthenics, and other exercise, primarily. You won't be dietary experts any time soon, but you will be able to ballpark how much you'll need to eat, and of which kinds of food," Umino-sensei explained. "Today will be mainly focused on the Field of taijutsu, rather than the Art. It wouldn't do for you to learn how to punch and kick if you didn't know how to keep your bodies in shape."

"That makes sense," Kizashi said. "Thank you sensei."

"Not a problem, Kizashi-san," Umino-sensei said kindly. "If there are no more immediate questions?" he asked of the class, which replied with silence. Nodding to himself, he started giving them an overview of what they could expect to learn the next four years. Naruto swiftly tuned him, and the class' sporadic questions out to read in his book. His eyes roamed over the pages, taking in pictures of taijutsu stances, the twelve Zodiac handseals with a curious reference to off-zodiac handseals that he marked as wanting to ask of his tenants later. Looking up after skimming the first set of chapters, he saw that lunch was still two hours away. As his sensei was still busy with listing the various subjects and a short introduction he turned his attention back to the book.

Fifteen minutes later, he stumbled upon a picture that aroused his curiosity. '_Do either of you know of a Yōkai Division?' _he asked mentally.

"_Can't say I've heard of them, Naruto-dono." _

"**Likewise, gaki. Ask your dolphin teacher.**"

_Well, that was helpful, _he thought as he raised his hand.

"Yes, Naruto-san?" Iruka asked.

"Who are the guys on page sixteen six?" Iruka raised an eyebrow and went to the teacher's desk to grab himself a copy of the textbook. Flipping to the sixth page of chapter sixteen, he asked, "You mean the ANBU?" in a tone of surprise.

Naruto nodded. "Yeah, they don't look like the ANBU I've seen before."

Idly wondering why Naruto had seen ANBU before, they were supposed to be the _invisible_ eyes and ears of the Hokage, he nodded in understanding. "This is a relatively new addition to the ANBU Corps called the Yōkai Division. There was a big commotion a year or so after the Kyūbi attack involving a minor demon that had managed to find its way to the human plane and caused a few deaths.

"Shortly after, the Yōkai Division was made with the specific goal of tracking down and taking care of roaming demons, up to and including hypothetical free Bijū."

A pink-haired girl raised her hand. _Kizashi's sister? _Naruto thought. "Yes, Sakura-san?" Umino-sensei asked.

"What is a Bijū?" she asked curiously. Almost the entire class nodded along, demons were always good for rousing a person's curiosity. Naruto gave a mental nudge to his own tenants, thinking that knowledge of human perception of Bijū could be useful to know.

"I'd planned to go over this later this year, but I guess I can postpone the rest of the year's topic later, if all agree?" The class responded by giving a unanimous affirmative answer. "Very well then. In short, the nine Bijū are demons so powerful, each has been classified as walking natural disasters. However, in the grand scheme of things they themselves are not as important ever since they were all sealed. More on that later this year and next year.

"The current leading theory on the Bijū is that they are embodiments of a particular concept or element. The Nibi's recorded powers have all to do with life, death, and the spirits, so the current thought is that the Nibi is the Shinigami's assistant in the mortal plane."

"**That's actually fairly accurate. Nibi-chan always was a little more... spiritually inclined than the rest of us, so when the nine Bijū were made she got most of the purely spiritual powers. She only became the Shinigami's assistant a millennium ago, though." **

"Other demons possess a variety of abilities, but the ones we've seen so far all possessed only a single ability type each. If one wielded Lightning, you could expect it not to be wield Earth, Water, Wind, or Fire. Turn to page eighteen seventy."

They all flipped through their books to chapter eighteen, page seventy, and were greeted by a wolf-ogre-stag... thing that looked like it was hurling rocks at ninja clad in black with muted green, with demonic facial imprints on their backs.

"That is what we've called an ōkami-oni. One of the many types of demons you'll be taught about during the four years. Despite its fierce look, it's not that big a threat. Fresh Academy graduates have a fifty-fifty chance of killing them, and we've yet to lose a single Chūnin to them. You might wonder at this point, why an entire ANBU division dedicated to killing Yōkai?"

Nods were given all around the classroom. A slight grin appeared on their sensei's face. "Turn to page eighteen ninety," he said calmly. The picture that greeted them was of a voluptuous red-eyed human girl approximately 170cm tall with flowing red hair falling to mid-back. What drew most of their attention, male or female, were the enormous breasts the girl sported. Had Naruto had the knowledge, he would have said they were easily double-I cups. As it was, he considered them far too large to be comfortable. "**The Yōkai Division killed her?**" the Kyūbi butted in with surprise. Naruto's response was cut off before he could even voice it by the continued talking of Umino-sensei.

"At first, the Yōkai Division was a knee-jerk reaction to the discovery of demonic activity in the Elemental Nations. Then this one came, along with what we assume were her two sisters. This, students, is an example of the class of yōkai we've called Daiyōkai, with the Bijū being Chōyokai. She appeared five years ago near Tanzaku Gai, and the Yōkai Corps intercepted her before she could do a lot of damage. However, she was a very skilled combatant. If not for the interference of Jiraiya of the Sannin, the group sent, numbering some twenty high-quality ninja, would have perished to the last," he said, adding the last sentence in a dramatic voice. "As it was, she was killed after inflicting grievous wounds upon Jiraiya, though they were healed by a skilled medic-nin later."

"**That's... surprising. To take out even one of the Terrible Triplets with twenty-one to one odds is impressive,** **no matter who it is that takes them out,**" the Kyūbi mused.

'_Terrible Triplets?' _Naruto asked. _'Why are they called that?' _

"**I'll tell you later, it's a long story and you're still in the Academy. If you want to become a shinobi, and thus allowed to grow strong enough to protect yourself from those that seek ****_my_**** power, you need to graduate. That means paying attention.**"

_'Fine,' _Naruto groused, turning his attention back to his sensei. "—nd that is all for now, let's have an early lunch, okay?" _Damnit I missed it. It better not have been important._

As the chatter in the class increased while the students were trying to take their mind off the new, rather scary information, Naruto stayed seated and flipped through the book trying to find the nine Bijū, the ninth in particular. A subtle pressure settled behind his eyes. He suspected that both his tenants were curious for the answer to his search and had chosen to watch.

Despite all Bijū being sealed at the moment, there was an entire chapter dedicated to them and their abilities, including any possible abilities that may be passed on to their Jinchūriki. Flipping the pages to reach the section on the Kyūbi, his eyes fell on a two pages wide picture of an enormous red-furred foxed with equally red, hateful eyes. The volcano in the back was in the process of erupting, spewing thick gouts of lava into the atmosphere while the clouds seemed to coalesce into a storm system of terrifying magnitude, lightning lancing towards the earth. Naruto heard an appreciative whistle sound from the seal.

"**That image has the Kyūbi no Kitsune seal of approval, kit. Including the caption underneath,**" the Kyūbi said. Naruto frowned, he'd not yet seen a caption. His eyes roamed over the pages, eventually finding the caption centred on the left page written in tiny characters beneath the image.

_The Kyūbi no Kitsune, sometimes referred to as simply 'Tenpenchii'. Bijū of destruction. _

– – – –

**Glossary: **

**Akai Chishio no Habanero: ****The ****Red-Hot Blooded Habanero. **

**Benishinigami: ****The ****Crimson Reaper (not sure if this translation to ****J****apanese is correct, I simply threw the kanji for crimson and Grim Reaper together and romanized it :p) **

**Aka no Shi: The Red Death.**

**Sangatsu: March.**

**Raiton no Yoroi: Armour of the Lightning Release. Less formally referred to as Lightning Armour.**

**Tenpenchii: Natural Disaster Befalling Heaven and Earth. Alternate translation: Cataclysm. ****There's a canon technique by the same name****. **

**Yōkai: Supernatural apparitions, including but not limited to, Kitsune, Tanuki, Yūrei, Kappa, and Tengu. Behaviour ranges from malicious to mischievous, with the occasional bouts of good fortune granted. Generally humanoid with animal features, but can also be looking like a normal human, an inanimate object, or have no single shape at all. **

**Daiyōkai: Great Yōkai.**

**Chōyōkai: Ultra/Super Yōkai.**

**Oni: Demon, a sub-class of yōkai. Generally portrayed** **as hideous, gigantic ogre-like creatures with sharp claws, wild hair, and two long horns growing from their head. Many skin colours are noted in traditional folklore, but red and blue are most prevalent. **

**Ōkami-oni: Wolf-demon. An oni with significant wolf characteristics. **

– – – –

**A/N: Next chapter will be delayed, There's resits of exams coming in the next few weeks and I'd like to try and develop some of my other ideas for fanfics. Details on my profile. The next chapter may take a month, possibly longer as I try to get some planning done in between studying and writing. **

**See you next time!**


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